Robert Southey is best known as a poet (he served as England's Poet Laureate for 30 years), but he was also a prolific writer of histories, biographies, and essays.
Southey's final, unfinished work, The Doctor, etc. (1834-1847), is a grand commonplace book--a seven-volume collection of miscellaneous articles and essays, loosely connected by the narrative of Dr. Dove and his horse Nobs. "Retirement," one of the short pieces in The Doctor, is developed with a series of engaging examples.
Retirement
by Robert Southey
It is neither so easy a thing, nor so agreeable a one, as men commonly expect, to dispose of leisure when they retire from the business of the world. Their old occupations cling to them even when they hope that they have emancipated themselves. Go to any seaport town, and you will see that the sea captain, who has retired upon his well-earned earnings, sets up a weather cock in full view from his window, and watches the variations of the wind as duly as when he was at sea, though no longer with the same anxiety. A tallow chandler, having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, and took a house in the country, not far from London, that he might enjoy himself; and, after a few months' trial of a holiday life, requested permission of his successor to come into town and assist him on melting days. The keeper of a retail spirit-shop, having in like manner retired from trade, used to employ himself by having one puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints into another. A butcher in a small town, for some time after he had left off business, informed his old customers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week just for amusement.
